


all straight lines circle sometimes

by Talahui



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Colorado Avalanche, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Break Up, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 00:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16186565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talahui/pseuds/Talahui
Summary: Nate stands, his body as close to EJ’s as it can get without them touching. “I wanted to see you.” His words are a hot breath against the short hairs at the back of EJ’s neck. “You basically disappeared into retirement which is like a surprise to literally no one, but you disappeared on me too.”“Gabe and Tys found me just fine,” EJ says.Nate sighs, momentarily resting his forehead on EJ’s shoulder before thinking better of it and stepping back. “I guess they did.”





	all straight lines circle sometimes

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [crispierchip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crispierchip/pseuds/crispierchip) in the [boysarehot](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/boysarehot) collection. 



> If you found this by googling your name, congratulations on an ao3 account. Let's agree you shouldn't be reading hockey rpf and that this really isn't about you.
> 
> Title comes from This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open by the Weakerthans. Thank you to Springsteen for the last minute beta and the many helpful answers from the gc about everything from appropriate Congrats on the Sex songs to Beijing Team Canada predictions. Y'all made this challenge a lot of fun.

Building the house had always been part of The Plan. He was never gonna be one of those guys whose hockey decline let him play past thirty-five, so he’d had his post-retirement plans ready early on. They had been a little more optimistic than they should have been, but he couldn’t really fault himself for wanting something to look forward to once his body stopped being able to do the thing he’d given the first half of his life to.

There were gaping holes in The Plan, ones he’d never bothered to fill even when they’d started showing up eight years ago, but he had the house and his horses and a woodshop filled with increasingly improving furniture he’d made himself. His dad had been a retail contractor for a few years while EJ’d been growing up, and he liked to think he’d picked up a few things from the days he’d go with to his dad’s work sites. Mostly that it was not as easy as it looked. Still, what was retirement if not endless years with too much time on your hands?

He’d thought it would take longer to settle in, honestly.

Avs media has been calling for weeks. The first two years after he’d left Denver they’d been pretty good about giving him space, but the team’s been having an incredible season, and management has been coming up with excuses to bring back old teammates for everything from short videos to guest appearances. EJ had made the mistake of picking up once and ended up being roped into an interview with Avs in Your Earholes, so now he turns his phone off and tells everyone reception on the ranch isn’t great.

Gabe knows he does it and insists on sending EJ messages that stack up in his inbox until EJ finally turns his phone back on to deal with the deluge of texts and e-mails and voice messages that are at least 80% Gabe and the kids. He’s been surprised more than once by the whole Landeskog family on his front porch because he hadn’t gotten the message and Gabe hadn’t bothered to wait for permission.

The last time Gabe had come up by himself was in September. School had just started and the girls were getting used to their regular routine again, so Gabe had stayed for a few days midweek before the season started and the game schedule took over everything else. They had an understanding. Gabe got a free pass any time he wanted to show up on EJ’s doorstep, and no one commented on why EJ never came to Denver to visit.

This trip, Gabe had been particularly obsessed with a game called Skopa Frau, and they’d play cards for hours and hours on the front porch before moving it inside to power through under the warm lights above his kitchen island. He’d let himself be convinced by the person at Home Depot to use Edison lights, which were apparently no longer on trend but better for a space he wanted to feel warm and intimate. There was something to be said for softening the fluorescent glow of regular lighting, especially at three in the morning.

One night they’d played til the pinks and oranges overtook the final grays of night, and the entire east wall erupted in color and light across the Sierra Nevadas.

“The wall of windows makes a lot more sense now,” Gabe had said in awe. He’d bought the property for this--the acres of timbered hillsides and the slow moving streams and the sunrise breaking through the purple mountains--but it never stopped surprising him. “This must be the best excuse to bring people up here. _Come to my house. We’ll bang with glorious mountain ranges and a fucking lake in the background_.”

“Was that what you were looking for this trip?” EJ had asked mildly. “I think Mel might have some issues with that.”

“Mel would tell me to send pictures,” Gabe had said. “She’d probably make it our Christmas card.”

They’d sent one with a photo from the delivery room the year Emmy had been born, so he wouldn’t be surprised. Emmy had been covered in blood and screaming, umbilical cord still attached to her mother, as the doctor placed her in her father’s outstretched arms. EJ had been both delighted and traumatized to receive the photo in the mail and still had it taped to his refrigerator in pride of place.

“Nobody really comes up here other than you guys.” It had hurt to admit, but it was true. Gabe was the only one willing to invite himself, and EJ didn’t want to ask anybody who’d turn him down. “It’s a long drive.”

“I thought you were seeing someone.”

“I was, for awhile,” EJ had said. He’d dated a couple of guys in that first year, but no one he liked enough to invite back to his house. Being mid-construction had been an easy excuse. They’d usually hook up at the other guy’s place, and if the date went badly enough, they wouldn’t get farther than a backseat or bathroom stall. There were a few guys who had started out promising but quickly fizzled, the weirdness of sitting across from someone who didn’t understand what his life with hockey had been like only compounded by his own inability to understand an entire life built around being out. They’d forgotten what the closet was like, and he felt decades behind these men who had no reason to hide. It was probably for the best. He’d have been as disappointing as a boyfriend as he had been as a number one draft pick.

“I just don’t want you to feel lonely,” Gabe had said quietly.

“I’m not,” EJ had insisted. _Only when you’re here_.

It was easier with just Mel and the kids. They’d trot alongside the dogs around the pasture, feed the horses, and soak up the California warmth during long Colorado winters. It makes his loneliness feel less lonely when it’s just them. And if uncle EJ aches when he holds the kids in his lap for their first ride or puts extra whipped cream on whole wheat waffles because he knows he’ll only ever do this for someone else’s children, at least it’s a familiar feeling.

Tyson had been up a couple times too. Seattle wasn’t so far, and he claimed the selfies with Biz Nasty more than made up for the short flight and the five hour drive from SFO. He @’d the real Biz Nasty and started a #certifiedhorsegirlretirement hashtag. It was...nice. Normal.

Things had been weird with Tyson after EJ’s thing with Nate had ended because EJ had used him as a buffer between his heartbreak and Nate’s indifference in those early months before Tyson’s trade, but if Tyson had noticed he doesn’t hold it against him. Sometimes he’d say something like he knew more than he let on, but then it would pass and he’d quickly follow it up with another story about some new kind of ridiculousness his rookies had gotten into.

Tyson was good at that: eating up the awkward silences with stories and jokes and the awkward laugh that means he knows he’s left himself wide open for chirping. He’d done a hilarious tribute video celebrating Nate’s 1,000th point a few months ago that had included a bunch of behind the scenes video that EJ had never seen before, which was saying something, given he’d been somewhat of an amateur Nate MacKinnon historian for awhile there. He limited himself to a single watch before deleting it off his phone and blocking the website.

They’d asked him to do something for Nate last Spring, too, once the Lindsay nomination had been announced, but he pretended not to get their calls, and the new head of media didn’t know him well enough to boss him around like Lauren had.

* * *

His mistake is getting too comfortable because when his phone starts ringing in March he picks up. A bunch of hockey teams have been capitalizing on the post-Olympic buzz, so he’s not surprised they want him to bring his silver medal back to UCHealth. It doesn’t even feel like a trick until Nate strolls into the room, red Team Canada jacket zipped to his chin, and pulls out a box with two gold medals nestled inside. Another way he’s surpassed EJ.

“Hey,” Nate grins, pulling EJ in by the hand for a hug. It leaves him feeling winded. “You look good.”

EJ doesn’t squirm under Nate’s appraisal, refuses to flinch when he runs his gaze down EJ’s body and back up. It doesn’t matter if Nate likes what he sees. That had never been the problem. It had been getting Nate to like anything else about him.

That’s EJ revising their history, he knows. Nate had liked him plenty. Just not in the way he’d wanted.

“Yeah, thanks,” EJ says. He doesn’t need to say how great Nate’s looking. Once Nate had figured out his hair situation, EJ had basically been screwed. He’d grown more and more into his face and body every year, and the result had been pretty devastating for EJ’s general well-being.

Nate crosses his arms over his chest and steps even farther into EJ’s space. He feels boxed in by Nate’s broad shoulders and thick thighs. Where the fuck is Gabe? He should be here protecting EJ with his own silver medal.

Nate keeps talking like it hasn’t been almost three years since they’ve been in the same room, but EJ’s not an idiot. There was a good twelve month period there where he was finely tuned to Nate flirting with him, the telltale way he’d tilt his chin and look up at him through his lashes, the smile that felt like it was only his. This is Nate flirting.

“We should grab lunch. There’s a restaurant down the road that just opened up a couple months ago.”

“Yeah, sure,” EJ hears himself agree before he can stop himself. Fuck. Nate is flirting and it’s fucking working.

Nate grins, eyes going small above his cheeks. “Cool. I’ll drive us over after we’re finished with photos.”

“No, that’s okay,” EJ swoops in to save himself, jiggling his house keys. “You can just send me the address. I have a car.”

He does not actually have a car in Colorado, but uber works just as well.

“Oh, for sure,” Nate says. He shoves his hands into his pockets and pulls out his phone. “You’ll have to give me your new number. Your old one hasn’t been working, and Gabe was being an asshole about giving it to me.”

“Probably cuz I changed it like five years ago?” EJ tries to laugh. The EJ who’d never been fucked up over Nate would have. He’d have said something like, _Took you long enough to notice, dumbass_ , but in a playful way. He wouldn’t ache for the EJ who’d changed his number so Nate would ask.

“No way,” Nate says, and he laughs too, a real one, handing EJ his phone and letting their fingers brush like EJ isn’t completely aware of what he’s doing. “We texted all the time before you moved to California.”

“Group chat,” EJ reminds him. Out of habit, he punches in Nate’s old passcode, and is surprised when it bounces back.

Nate frowns, taking back the phone and typing in a completely different series of numbers. “I haven’t used that since I dated Cas--”

He seems to realize the timeline halfway through and thrusts his phone back into EJ’s hand. “You’re still in there. Just change the number so I don’t fuck up the new one with the old one.”

EJ scrolls through five different variations on babe--three of which are probably Gabe, to be fair--before he finds his name next to three horse emojis and a laser gun. When he opens up his name a list of missed calls pop up along with a text as recent as this morning. **Stoked to see you!! Let me know if you want me to pick you up so we can drive over together.**

* * *

Lunch is at a tiny Cuban fusion place with dark stained wood floors and lots of natural light. It’s the kind of low key fancy that EJ would have killed to take Nate to ten years ago, but sitting across from him now comes with a heavy pressure across his collarbones that makes him feel weighed down to his chair..

Nate doesn’t stop talking while they order, telling story after story from the season like EJ’s ever shared a room with half the guys he’s talking about. The stories are better than the questions, which are the kind of thing you’d ask a casual acquaintance at a high school reunion after disappearing from their lives the day they handed you your diploma. When you’ve ignored someone for years, that’s probably what you are.

_Where are you living? What have you been up to? How’s MacWinnon doing?_

Nate wants stories. He wants EJ to tell him about how he slept in an RV for three extra months while he waited for the stained glass for the bathrooms to come in or how the Australian Shepherd at the stable where he’d been boarding the horses during the build had had puppies and he hadn’t been able to resist taking home the last one that no one had wanted even though it meant sharing three hundred square feet with three full sized dogs and a puppy or how he’d gotten lost on his own land during his first ride with Biz and they’d had to camp out under the stars and find their way back the next morning. He could pour those stories into Nate until the empty years between them filled back up and closed the chasm between them. He could.

He doesn’t.

He says _California. Nothing really. I sold him._

“You sold him?” Nate looks more surprised by this than anything else he’s managed to get out of EJ today. He picks at the irritated cuticle of his thumb and looks at EJ’s plate rather than his eyes.

“He was never really mine,” EJ shrugs. “Just fifty percent.”

When EJ doesn’t offer anything else, Nate launches into a long story about Team Canada. EJ had only gone to the Olympics the once and felt out of his depth the entire time even if he had taken home a silver for his trouble, but Nate had been born for Olympic ice. He had lit it up in both Beijing and Stockholm, but this year he’d worn an A, scored the OT goal that took them to the gold medal game, and celebrated accordingly.

“Wish you’d been there to celebrate with me,” Nate says, voice low, as he rolls his bottom lip between his teeth. Heat pools low in EJ’s gut as he remembers how it had felt to have Nate tug on his own lower lip with those teeth.

“I heard you did just fine without me,” EJ manages. His response sounds thin to his own ears, but Nate grins like he thinks EJ’s teasing.

“Factor has a big mouth.”

Factor hadn’t been the one to fuck and tell, though EJ had still managed to hear about Factor and Nate’s gold medal celebration in Beijing regardless. Matthews had been the one with the loose lips, and Tyson had regaled him with the mockingly retold story of Nate’s various Olympic hookups over drinks the last time Seattle had played San Jose.

“Stockholm was kind of a mess,” Nate admits. A blush creeps up his neck towards his ears as he remembers something he has the restraint not to share. “You know how it goes in the Village.”

EJ does _not_ , in fact, know how it goes. After the medal ceremony in 2010, he and Phil had brought a bottle of whiskey up to his room and proceeded to get roaring drunk over a ridiculous Fast and Furious marathon drinking game. Neither of them had barfed, but it had been a close thing. No one had touched faces. They hadn’t even passed out in the same bed.

The food arrives just as EJ’s phone buzzes, so while the waiter places beautifully arranged plates in front of them he pulls his phone out of his pocket to check in case it’s Gabe with an excuse to get him out of this conversation. Instead, it’s a message from Tyson with some kind of attached media.

EJ swipes to unlock his phone on Tyson’s text and a video pops up immediately. He doesn’t bother clicking the thumbnail. Tyson had sent it to Nate at least once a week after he’d started dating Cassie, and Nate had insisted on playing it in its entirety every single time in a futile attempt to discourage Tyson through collective punishment.

Nate’s over the top romantic gestures  with Cassie had made him an easy target, and there wasn’t another guy in the room who didn’t love chirping him for it.  “Who knew Nate Dogg was such wifey material?” Comes had shouted across the locker room to hoots and hollers. EJ had known. God he’d wished he hadn’t.

“Why did Tyson just text me a link to the ‘I Just had Sex’ music video?” EJ asks.

Nate shrugs, but his lips curve up in a delighted sort of smile. “Probably because he thinks we’re smashing and thinks it’s funny.” Nate does, too, apparently.

“You told Tyson we…”

“I mean yeah, obviously,” Nate says. “Didn’t you tell Gabe?”

“Fuck no,” EJ says. Too quickly, based on Nate’s grimace.

He’d been too embarrassed by his feelings and how very much they were not reciprocated to ever say anything to anyone, let alone his best friend. Gabe had known how gone on Nate he was; there would have been no end to the well-meaning lectures. He can’t tell Nate that.

Instead, he says, “Gabe would have given me so much shit.”

That’s clearly the right answer because Nate’s grinning again. “Oh, I mean, for sure. Tyson was always chirping me for hooking up with you, saying it was lazy and that he expected better from me.”

Nate wants him to laugh, is inviting him in on the joke like what they’d both said was the same thing, but it hurts somewhere deep and forgotten. Nate could do better than him. Wasn’t that the same thing he’d told himself the whole time they’d been together? He wasn’t allowed to feel this hurt by truth he already knew.

He digs into his meal in earnest, barely tasting the plantains and beans and ropa vieja in his haste. One conversation didn’t have to ruin his trip. He’d go back to California next week, lose his phone, and go back to forgetting Nate MacKinnon was ever a person he’d wanted in his life.

“Gabe says you’re staying with them the whole time you’re here,” Nate says between much slower bites, oblivious as ever to EJ’s inner turmoil. “Monopolizing your time as per usual. If you get tired of the noise or want a kid break, you’re always welcome at my place. I’m still at the same house in Washington Park, so you know where to find me.”

EJ had been to Nate’s place exactly twice since he’d bought it, for team game nights when it was Nate’s turn to host. Gabe had driven him both times since he went over every week for Prison Break marathons and didn’t need to look up the directions.

When they’d been together--fucking--Nate had always come over instead. He knew what Nate looked like lounging on every surface of his Denver house, how he’d forget about every Gatorade he ever opened halfway through, which beer brand Nate liked to drink best while they watched movies after dinner, their legs tangled up together on the ottoman. He had kept a half-drunk pack of it in the back of the fridge til his house had sold just in case Nate ever came over again and wanted some.

He’d even seen Nate’s sleepy Sunday morning expression once, the way his whole face looked soft around the edges as he blinked awake, how he curled his body around EJ’s and buried his face in the back of his neck. That had been the morning Nate had said he wanted something real.

He just hadn’t wanted it with EJ.

“Why are you doing this?” EJ asks. He means taking him out to lunch, pretending everything between them is fine. Pretending there’s anything between them at all. But he especially means dredging up all the things EJ had very intentionally buried.

“We’re friends, and I haven’t seen you since you left Denver.” Nate puts down his fork, tines up, in an X with his knife. “My invite to your mountain getaway must have gotten lost in the mail or something.” This time when he laughs his voice cracks. The hurt’s right there at the surface.

“C’mon, man. You don’t have to--”

“Are we not friends anymore?’ Nate asks like it’s a joke he expects EJ to play along with.

EJ sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He hadn’t wanted to say this. Nate shouldn’t need him to say this. “You just realized we’re not friends?”

“We’re friends,” Nate insists. He pushes their plates to the side so there’s nothing between them and tries to take EJ’s hand, but EJ can’t stand the thought of Nate touching him in this restaurant with all these people watching them and tucks his hands safely under the table.

“Ten years ago maybe.”

EJ can see the instant Nate figures out he’s fucked up. The light in his eyes dims as he scrambles to recover a conversation he still doesn’t realize was fucked from the start. “Let’s go back to ten years ago then,” he says desperately.

“I don’t need that kind of friend any more.”

EJ stands, ignoring the stares as his chair scrapes against the tile floor. “If we were too old to waste our time back then, I’m way too old now.” Tossing a twenty on the table, he says, “Thanks for lunch. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

It only takes a few hours before Tyson starts blowing up his phone. **WTF, man. Since when do you play hard to get?**

EJ can’t help hearing Nate’s words from earlier on repeat. _He expected better from me._ He doesn’t want to talk about it, especially not with Tyson, who thought him and Nate being together was some kind of joke. He puts his phone on Do Not Disturb and spends the afternoon cradling the baby to his chest and listening to Mel talk about her day, wishing heartbreak were something you could build up a tolerance to like alcohol or hot peppers.

When Emmy’s back from school, Mel tosses him the keys and sends them off to the grocery store with strict instructions to bring back only what’s on the list. “Don’t let her steamroll you.”

EJ has no idea what she’s talking about.

They come back an hour later with the most beautiful produce Pete’s had to offer and a box of chocolate chip cookies for dessert that had definitely not been on the list. So maybe EJ knew a little bit what she was talking about.

* * *

Mel lights candles a few minutes before Gabe’s due back from practice and hands EJ a stack of the nice dinner guest plates to set out in the dining room instead of at the kitchen table where they’ve been eating the last two nights. A bottle of wine, the fancy brand of sparkling water, and five wine glasses--one plastic for Emmy--sit in the center of the table along with a freshly bought bouquet of flowers.

“Since when do I rate the nice wine and mood lighting?” he teases as he helps Emmy fold the cloth napkins into little pockets for the silverware.

Mel grins, cat-like, and tosses a spare napkin at his head. “Trust me, you don’t. Family doesn’t get special treatment.”

A few minutes later, Emmy shoots out of the room before EJ even hears the door unlock, and her delighted cries of “Pappa! Pappa! Pappa!” let’s them know Gabe’s home.

When Gabe rounds the corner into the dining room he has Emmy in his arms, her long legs swinging at his side. Everyone but Gabe and Emmy thinks she’s getting too big to be carried, but for Gabe Emmy outranks them all, so she worms her way into her father’s arms as often as possible. Behind them, Nate holds a plastic wrapped container of tiramisu.

“Oh, wow, Nate. Did you make that yourself?” Mel takes the offered container and herds him into the room so he’s standing next to EJ.

Nate shrugs, stuffing his empty hands into his pockets. “I tried. No promises on taste.”

“Well, it looks great,” she says. “Let me pop this in the fridge and then we can start. Elias is already in bed because he was _not_ feeling nap time this afternoon, so it’s just gonna be the five of us for dinner. Save me some of the pear salad? You know how I feel about goat cheese.”

“Food looks great, babe,” Gabe says, already dishing up plates. He hands Emmy one with carefully separated food items that she inspects for cross contamination before finally accepting her meal.

Mel sweeps back into the room, leaning down into a careless kiss with her husband before sliding into the chair beside him. “It was mostly Erik.”

“Emmy helped,” EJ manages on automatic. He can’t stop looking at Nate’s hands as they pick nervously at the tablecloth.

“Uncle EJ let me use the _sharp_ knife to cut the cheese.” Emmy’s eyes bug out wildly with the pressure of her withheld laughter. Gabe’s child would think fart jokes were peak comedy.

Gabe cackles.

“You would,” EJ says, but he nudges Emmy gently with his elbow and grins at her.

She grins back, reaching up to poke at his smile with what he hopes are clean fingers. “I miss your no teeth smile.”

A shit eating grin spreads across Gabe’s face. Truly her father’s daughter. “No one was gonna kiss Uncle EJ with his no teeth smile.”

Across the table, Nate chokes on his wine.

Emmy squeals. “Ew, Pappa! Gross! Uncle EJ doesn’t kiss. That’s only for mammas and pappas. Right, EJ?”

Horrified, EJ looks between Mel and Gabe for the correct answer, but both stare back with matching cheshire grins plastered across their faces. They deserve each other.

“I mean…” EJ clears his throat. “I kiss you and Elias, don’t I.”

“Those are baby kisses,” Emmy says like she’s explaining things to a small child. “Sometimes when you love someone so much all the love bubbles up inside your body and has to burst out. That’s called baby kisses.”

Mel and Gabe nod in exaggerated agreement. “Yeah, it is.”

“You just love me too, too much,” she says, patting his cheek.

She’s not wrong, and he has to pepper her face with baby kisses to prove her point. This time he doesn’t even wish she were his for more than half a second before he can embrace what he does get: a best friend whose family is his family and a giggling little girl cradling his face in her tiny hands.

When he looks back up, Nate is watching them with a soft smile, and EJ freezes. He feels caught out playing house with Gabe’s family, like he’s exposed his vulnerable underbelly only to reveal that being the glorified uncle is the best he has to show for himself. Nate had told him he couldn’t have anything real until after hockey, and EJ hadn’t believed him. EJ had wanted not to believe him. Maybe he’d find someone who understood the situation, someone who loved him enough to wait out hockey, but Nate had been the realist.

The realest relationship he has is with a six year old who doesn’t even think he’s marriage material.

He feels naive to have thought he’d have someone by now.

“What about Nate?” Gabe prompts. “Does his full set of teeth get kisses?”

Emmy considers Nate carefully. “Definitely no.”

The table erupts in laughter.

* * *

After dessert-- _no promises, my ass, it was delicious_ \--Mel and Gabe take back bedtime story duties from EJ and leave him and Nate to clear the table and load dishes into the dishwasher.

It’s quiet work. Nate knows where everything goes and even loads the dishwasher the way Gabe likes it, alternating large and small plates to ensure everything gets extra clean. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his button down to expose the ropey muscles of his forearms; it’s the kind of shirt you wear on a date, not for dinner at a close friend’s.

“You come over a lot?” EJ asks. He scrapes the excess food scraps into the garbage disposal and rinses the plate before passing it to Nate.

“Sometimes,” Nate says.

“They always give you the special treatment?” EJ gestures to the candles and the plates and the empty bottle of wine.

Nate snorts. “No. I usually get the eating cold leftovers directly out of the container treatment, but Gabe came through.”

There it was. That uneasy feeling he’d had since Mel lit the candles. He’d been too busy feeling warm at being considered family to poke at it, but EJ fucking knew it. Gabe and Mel had acted like it was a totally normal thing, and it was bullshit: the intimate dinner and the blatant excuse to get them alone.

“I’d told him I totally fucked up the hospital visit--”

EJ’s body goes rigid. He runs the garbage disposal to give him extra time to piece together the last few days. The hospital invitation, Gabe’s offer to have him stay with them, Mel’s insistence he take an uber instead of the car, lunch...  “The hospital visit was your idea?” he finally asks.

Nate stands, his body as close to EJ’s as it can get without them touching. “I wanted to see you.” His words are a hot breath against the short hairs at the back of EJ’s neck. “You basically disappeared into retirement which is like a surprise to literally no one, but you disappeared on me too.”

EJ’s fingernails have gone white at the tips from pressing so hard into the counter. Nate had been the one who disappeared first. He’d been the one who’d thought EJ would be satisfied being the perpetual rebound on Nathan MacKinnon’s pursuit of true love then pretended EJ didn’t exist without other people present when EJ hadn’t hated himself enough to take whatever part of Nate he could get anymore.

“Gabe and Tys found me just fine,” EJ says.

Nate sighs, momentarily resting his forehead on EJ’s shoulder before thinking better of it and stepping back. “I guess they did.”

There are no sounds coming from the bedrooms, no bedtime stories or lullabies floating down the stairs. He wonders how much of this whole plan had been Gabe’s idea. That asshole loves grand gestures. He’d probably think orchestrating a reunion was romantic.

“Look I--” Nate hesitates, shifts forward and back on his heels before settling. “Will you just look at me for a minute?”

EJ squeezes his eyes shut and breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth like Emmy when she’s sent to the cool down corner to regulate her emotions. He wonders what she’d call it when you’re feeling so much hurt and anger and heartbreak that it all bubbles up inside your body and has to burst out.

“What am I supposed to see, Nate?”

For the first time he lets himself look: the fine lines around Nate’s eyes, the more defined cheeks, the thin white scar running down the corner of his lips. It’s the additions rather than the absences that surprise him.

“I know I fucked up today--” Nate starts, but EJ doesn’t let him finish.

“You fucked up a long time ago, Nate. Today was just...ten years too late.”

Nate looks up at the ceiling and blinks rapidly, no doubt deeply regretting his request for EJ to look at him. “You should probably go,” EJ says. “I’ll finish cleaning up.”

“Right.” Nate rubs at his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Can I at least have another shot at seeing you again?”

“I don’t know,” EJ says and means it. Not if it’s going to feel like this. He’d made the five hour drive. He’d taken the flight. He’d even cooked the fucking dinner. All Nate had done was conspire to be in the same place he was. “Are you gonna do any of the work next time?”

* * *

By the time Gabe comes back down, EJ has finished cleaning the kitchen and moved on to the playroom. He’s dumped Emmy’s Legos out on the carpet and started sorting them by color back into their drawers, hands vibrating with the desire to skate out everything he’s feeling.

“Is the coast clear?” Gabe calls from down the hall. “You better not be defiling any of the communal areas. My children have to live here.”

EJ hears him checking the different downstairs rooms but doesn’t call out. He’s not feeling very charitable towards his best friend at the moment.

Gabe finds him a few minutes later sitting on the carpet with his legs splayed still surrounded by Legos.

“Nate left twenty minutes ago,” EJ says when Gabe drops down beside him. He scoops a pile of black legos into their drawer.

Gabe plucks a stray black lego from the blue pile and tosses it gently at EJ. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asks, not unkindly, as he takes in the hundreds of Legos littering the playroom floor..

EJ throws it back, hard, aiming for Gabe’s head. “What the fuck were _you_ doing?” He dumps another pile of Legos into the drawer roughly. “What the fuck was that?”

“Dinner?” A deep line runs down the center of Gabe’s forehead. “Why are you being so fucking weird?”

EJ starts shoving the Legos into drawers haphazardly, no longer invested in the organization process. “Were you in on it the whole time?”

Gabe doesn’t have to answer. The disappointed fall of his face is enough.

“Dammit, Gabe. You know--”

“What do I know?” Gabe pushes right back. “You never told me anything.”

EJ feels stupid having this argument on the floor. He pulls himself up, knees complaining noisily, and leans on the wall to get his legs back under him. “Yeah, but you knew.”

Gabe follows him up but leans against the opposite wall, his back against the door jam to block the only escape. “You can’t just expect people to fill in all the gaps you leave in conversations.” He doesn’t sound angry, just resigned. “I don’t know why you’re so mad. So he created a reason to see you. He took you to lunch and got invited over for dinner. It’s not like he made some big embarrassing declaration that you’d hate. You’ve been into him for ages. I thought you’d be happy.”

EJ shoves his hands into his pockets and hunches his shoulders up around his ears. “Yeah, well, he should’ve tried ten years ago.”

“Did you ever ask him to?”

Of course Gabe would think it were that easy. He’d met Mel when they were so young, and there’d never been a question that they belonged with each other. The only time Gabe had ever been anyone’s second choice was draft day, and that’s only because the Oilers didn’t know what they were doing.

“Was I supposed to do that before or after he told me we should stop fucking so he could find someone he wanted to have a real relationship with?”

It’s not Gabe’s fault, but he wants to wound someone besides himself, and Gabe was the one insisting on reminding him. He wanted Gabe to know he wasn’t the only one who could keep secrets.

The whole thing had started out well enough--Nate keeping him company while he moped about having a broken leg, making EJ forget how shitty it felt to be out when the team needed him so badly. No one had ever taken the time to get to know his body the way that Nate had that terrible season and into the next. It hadn’t felt great when Nate would pick up while they were out with the team, but it was never anything that lasted. He had always come back to EJ.

Until he hadn’t.

Nate hadn’t even bothered rolling out of bed before he’d told him that he’d met someone.

“It’s time I found something real, y’know?” Nate had said. EJ had still had bruises on his hips in the shape of Nate’s fingertips, but those hadn’t been real enough. “I can’t keep fucking around with a teammate forever.”

Things with Cassie had only lasted four months, but it had been long enough for EJ to say no when Nate tried to hook up after she had left him.

“I’m too old to waste my time on something going nowhere,” EJ had told him. It was true, even if he didn’t have it in him to try for something possibly permanent with anyone else.

“Yeah, but you’re gay,” Nate had said. “It’s not like you can have anything real til after hockey anyway.” Not like Nate could. “Why not waste your time with me?”

EJ had made sure no one noticed anything was wrong after Nate had broken up with him.

A break up. That’s not what it had been, but that’s what it had felt like.

He’d stuck closer to Gabe than before, but that was normal enough too. He’d mentored the rookies and made sure none of them got injured while drunkenly trying to drive a golf cart. He’d just...stopped hanging out with Nate alone after that. They’d still hung out in a group, grabbed lunch with Gabe or Tyson or some of the rookies to disguise the break between them, and they’d made the same jokes they always had. It was like the last season had never happened.

That’s when EJ had known Nate had meant it when he’d said they were wasting time together. Friends would have still hung out even when they weren’t fucking. Friends would have felt the lack. But Nate never noticed.

“When did you--” Gabe starts and then stops. He rubs a hand over his face and presses his fingers against his eyelids. “You could have told me.” It’s not an accusation, but EJ feels guilty anyways.

“This retroactive humiliation is so fun though.” EJ throws another Lego at Gabe, more gently this time. It bounces off his hands and lands at his feet. Fifty-fifty chance Gabe steps on it later; EJ’s not too invested in which one it is. “I’m still not done being weird about this. You need to wait your turn.”

Gabe looks up, gives him a weak smile that was real enough. “But he like broke your heart and shit.”

“Fuck off,” EJ shoves Gabe lightly. It’s kind of nice to have someone indignant on his behalf.  “He did not.”

Gabe swivels his head to the side and stares at EJ, unimpressed.

“Barely, but whatever. It’s fine,” EJ says. “I’m over it.”

“You don’t seem over it.”

“I punched high,” EJ laughs. He’d been Icarus. That story was never going to end well for him anyways. “You should know a little something about that.”

“I’ll let Mel know you think so,” Gabe says.

“Trust me. She knows,” EJ says. “I told her she could do better at your wedding, but she said she’d keep you anyways, so congrats on that, buddy.”

Gabe pushes him towards the back of the house and out to the back deck where EJ has to pull a jacket on over three other long sleeve layers to be even remotely comfortable. His cold tolerance had been the first thing he’d lost when he’d moved to California, and it had only lessened over time. Maybe his skin was getting thinner.

“Not as good as your place, but we don’t do bad in the stars department.” Gabe reclines his deck chair all the way back to look up at the sky.

It doesn’t feel as endless as the sky back home, but it still makes him feel small beneath its vastness. He wishes that he could disappear into it.

“I’ll tell him to back off,” Gabe says, voice hushed. He doesn’t look over, but EJ can tell he wants to by the measured stillness of his body.

“Are you my dad now?” EJ asks. “Because I am prepared to call you Daddy in public if you really want that responsibility.”

Gabe kicks out towards EJ but only connects with air. “Jesus fuck,” Gabe squawks indignantly. ”I want no part in whatever kinky sex shit you’re into.”

“Then let me deal with my own shit, asshole.”

Gabe shifts onto his side. He’s little more than a head of bright blonde hair and white teeth but EJ can imagine the exact soft expression he has when he says, “I just want you to be okay.” It’s the same one he had after they’d been shunted out of the playoffs in the third round and he’d realized they’d never be teammates again.

EJ hadn’t been sad to leave hockey even then. He’d been sad he had nothing much to go in its place--he still was--but he’d played the best hockey he’d known how to, and that had been enough.

“I think I’m gonna change my ticket and head back early.” He was supposed to stay five more days, but it feels too sad now. He couldn’t shake the sick feeling of being caught playing a pale imitation of house.

Gabe jerks upright and nearly topples the chair in his haste to swing his body in EJ’s direction. “You’re not staying for the game?”

“Toothless Wonder’s been sick, and the dogs are lonely when I’m gone.” EJ stays laying down. It’s only an argument if they both engage.

“That’s literally why you pay that horse woman exorbitant amounts of money to stay at your house while you’re away,” Gabe argues anyway. “Come on, man. It’s the home closer.”

“You already clinched the playoff spot,” EJ says. “I’ll come back for the finals. Your ass better be there too.”

The next morning, Gabe drops him off at the airport and even puts on his hazards so that he can get out of the car to hug him goodbye properly. He pats EJ’s chest twice, then leaves his hand there and leans into his ear. “Hey, he fucked up. Maybe he doesn’t want to be a fuck up forever, y’know? I’m not saying you have to forgive him just…” he steps back and claps EJ one last time on the shoulder. “Ten years is a long time to love someone you won’t let love you back. Might as well see if he’s putting in the work to be better.”

EJ goes back home, pretends he isn’t listening to the Av’s last games of the season, and doesn’t think about the L word at all.

* * *

The morning after the Avs’ last game of the regular season, Nate shows up to the ranch with a rental car full of groceries and his road trip suitcase. Biz notices him first, making a startled sound and shifting nervously from hoof to hoof. “Whoa, buddy. We’re good.” He nuzzles Biz’s cheek with his forehead before gently tugging on his lead. That’s when EJ sees him. Nate’s frozen with the car door still open, cloth bags from the nearest grocery store spilling over both arms as he stares wide eyed at EJ. He’s caught like a deer crossing through a truck’s high beams at night, and EJ’s no better. Even though Nate had asked to see him again, he hadn’t expected him to actually follow through, but he should have remembered how much Nate liked a challenge.

Nate hesitates before shuffling toward the front porch to deposit the groceries. It takes him three more trips before the car is empty, and EJ can’t stop watching him. He can’t quite comprehend Nate in this place. In some of his wilder imaginings, he used to picture him and Nate in retirement: some horses, a couple dogs, close enough to a golf course that Nate could put those years of lessons to use. That was way before he bought this place, back when he’d imagined retirement as something you shared with someone rather than a long solitary retreat.

“Tys told me where you lived,” Nate says and it’s enough to shake EJ. Of course he did. At least Gabe had kept his promise to let it be.

EJ ties Biz to a post and starts unbuckling his saddle. It’ll mean carrying all of the tack back to the barn later, but his hands are antsy to do something, and it’s easier than having to look back. “I can’t entertain you.”

Nate smiles, tentative. “Who’s asking to be entertained?”

* * *

It’s easy enough to forget about Nate while EJ mucks the stalls and ensures all of the horses are fed. If he’s more thorough than usual in his wipe down of the tack room it’s only because it’s been awhile since he’s gone through all the old medicine bottles and ointments and grooming supplies. The bits and brushes are looking a little worse for wear too, so he fills the trough sink with hot soapy water to let them soak and tosses a pile of blankets and rags in the washer while he waits. By the time he’s scrubbed everything down and moved the laundry to the dryer, his t-shirt is soaked through and the sun is all the way up overhead. He yanks off the shirt, swipes it across his face, then throws it in with the last load.

Back in the house, Nate is stretched out in front of the windows like a cat, eyes closed, an open book resting on his chest. Ollie is curled up beside him, her fluffy Bernese body taking up most of the rug. EJ hesitates before pulling out his phone and taking a quick snapshot. He doesn’t need permission to document his dog’s life. He slips his phone back into his pocket and goes to investigate the kitchen where Nate has the dishwasher running and a chorizo omelet in the covered fry pan on the stove that EJ assumes is for him. It’s still mostly warm, so he slips the whole thing onto a plate and doesn’t bother reheating it before shoveling it unceremoniously into his mouth.

“There’s some melon in the fridge if you want,” Nate says, voice sleepy soft, as he pads over in his stocking feet. He’d changed into sweats and a t-shirt that probably fit better during the thick early months of the season but that now hung loosely at his arms. EJ doesn’t miss that long grind through the season or the abstinence from all the things that would make it harder.

“No bacon?” he asks, and Nate groans. EJ remembers the feeling.

“Don’t talk to me about bacon.” Nate slouches into the barstool and props himself upright with his hand. “It’s April. I’m suffering.”

“In June you can eat all the bacon out of the Stanley Cup, right?”

Nate yelps, and EJ feels adequately rewarded by Nate’s horror. “What the fuck, man! Don’t jinx it.”

EJ reaches into the refrigerator for the melon and finds it on the top shelf with a stack of six other tupperware containers he doesn’t recognize. Nate must have learned how to cook since his dry chicken on soggy pasta days. “Did Sid finally convert you?” he asks, pulling two forks out of their drawer and handing one to Nate before digging in. “I thought jinxes aren’t real.”

Nate accepts the fork begrudgingly and stabs at the melon until he manages to spear one successfully. “They’re not. Let’s talk about something else.”

EJ’s not interested in making small talk with Nate. They’d spent enough time not saying anything to each other, and being polite strangers seems somehow worse, but the conversation they should be having feels too big to have over the kitchen counter while Nate’s still sleepy eyed and EJ smells like barn.

“I’m gonna go to the shop for a bit,” EJ says instead. “You can-uh…” he hesitates. The shop feels private in a way the rest of the house doesn’t. There are a lot of half-done projects in there, things he started before he knew what he was doing but doesn’t have the heart to toss. He’s not sure he wants Nate to see it.

Nate smiles with half his mouth like he gets it. “I brought my laptop. There are plenty of shows on there for me to catch up on.”

And that’s...not what EJ wants either. Nate showed up. He made the effort, and EJ doesn’t want to waste it being embarrassed by what he’s built here. The truth is, it could be a good life if he let himself have it.

“No, you should come,” EJ says. “You can sweep the floor or something.”

“I will _not_ ,” Nate insists, but he’s laughing, so EJ’s sure he will.

* * *

EJ’s current project is a table he’s been slowly working away on for six months. He should have finished it months ago, but he keeps leaving it and coming back after he’s bungled his way through learning the next necessary skill on something less important. Figuring out how to build the channels for where the sliding extensions would go took at least six weeks before he was confident they wouldn’t stick. All he had left was the detail sanding and the staining, then he could screw on the top and move it into the kitchen.

Nate does end up sweeping the shop while EJ works, and then he starts tackling the chaos hiding in the cabinets. Since everything EJ needs for his current project is at the front, it’s easy for him to forget the mess tucked behind closed doors. He’s neat enough to keep the shop looking decently organized in the day-to-day messes but lacks the discipline to go back through the accumulated clutter he’d shoved somewhere mid-project and promptly forgotten about.

They’re quiet except for the occasional scrape of the sandpaper against wood or clang of metal on metal. Nate has always been good at being alone with him, has understood EJ’s need to occupy the same space without the responsibility of keeping the other person occupied. That year they’d fooled around hadn’t just been fucking. Most nights when Nate wasn’t traveling with the team, he’d come over with the same kind of stockpile of groceries he’d shown up with today. They’d put on music and make dinner together under EJ’s strict instructions. Sometimes they wouldn’t even talk except to give or ask for directions. It had been the opposite of lonely.

A couple hours in, Nate gets to EJ’s discarded projects pile: the stool that he’d cut crooked so that it constantly wobbled, a pair of sliding bookends he’d mismeasured, the zig-zag bookshelf he’d built backwards.

“Are you keeping these?” Nate asks, holding up a solitary cabinet door and gesturing to the rest of the pile with his other hand. The door was supposed to go with the built in armoire in the guest bedroom but had ended up being too small. He’d remembered to cut on the correct side of the measurement line after that.

EJ puts down the staining brush and walks over to where Nate is poking through his mistake museum. Nate hands him one of the bowls he’d made while he was learning how to use the lathe. It was lopsided, too thin in places, all-in-all one of the more terrible bowls he’d made before he’d felt confident enough to start working on the ornate legs of his dining room table. The last one was good enough to hold his fruit in on the kitchen counter.

“You can just shove them over there,” EJ says, pointing to a dark corner at the back.

“So you can ignore them until the next time I play woodshop fairy godmother, no way,” Nate teases. “Can you fix them?” He looks pointedly at the sorry bowl.

“Maybe not this,” EJ admits. He tosses the bowl into his garbage pile. “But some of it’s still salvageable.” He nudges the cabinet door Nate’s holding. “That’s good wood, and I don’t have an NHLer’s salary to fund my extravagant lifestyle anymore.”

Nate smiles up through his eyelashes, and EJ doesn’t resent the gesture for once. “Fine, but you only get to keep the stuff worth holding on to. If you can’t make something better out of it, we’re tossing it.”

EJ grins, his dimples cutting well worn lines into his cheeks. “Yeah, okay.”

* * *

After dinner they argue over movies on Nate’s laptop before finally agreeing on Die Hard 3 for the eighty-sixth time. The whole gang crowds in, dogs snuggled in a pile at their feet. It’s been a long time since they’ve sat this close together on purpose, and he lets the darkness and the sensation of Nate’s left side pressed against him and the familiar unfolding of the story settle over him.

He wants to kiss Nate, has wanted to kiss Nate since they were in the woodshop probably, and he can’t come up with any good reason not to any more. When he turns toward Nate, Nate’s already looking back, a vulnerable sort of tilt to his mouth.

“Can I--?”

EJ doesn’t wait for Nate to finish the question, just responds to his tentative hand on EJ’s neck by hauling himself up and settling his body over Nate’s thighs. His mouth against Nate’s is a warm slide of heat and muscle memory from a hundred other kisses like this one, hot and hungry. He can let himself have this at least: Nate’s hands under his shirt, the desperate roll of his hips, and the taste of Nate on his tongue.

* * *

EJ wakes up with the sun in increments, trained by now to follow its rise and fall. His body feels warm, cocooned in his blanket, and he lets himself sink into it, cataloguing the usual aches in his joints and muscles. He feels different this morning from most, but it’s not until he tries to roll up and out of bed that he realizes Nate’s pressed along his back, his arm wrapped around EJ to hold him against his chest. Still asleep, Nate draws him in closer and buries his nose into the warm curve between EJ’s neck and shoulder. There’s a new ache there that he hadn’t noticed at first, and he remembers the biting bruises Nate had left on his thighs and hips and shoulder the night before.

This was the opposite of what was supposed to happen. They hadn’t even talked yet. All the important things were still unsaid.

What if all they were good at doing was falling into bed together?

EJ climbs out from under Nate’s embrace and stumbles through the house collecting his clothes from the night before. The dogs trail after him, helpfully nudging his legs as they herd him to their empty bowls. He pulls on a hoodie and some joggers from the floor, slides on his barn sneakers, and whistles for the dogs to go out with him before their feeding. Jules is usually the only one who needs to be leashed for bathroom breaks because she’s notorious for distracting herself by sniffing plants and fences only to have an accident on the floor the minute they’re back inside, but she trots right up to her favorite potty bush before following him into the barn to feed the horses.

Nate’s awake and making oatmeal by the time he’s gotten the horses into the pasture and the dogs back inside for their breakfast. Music is playing quietly, and he’s humming along off-key, shaking his ass in the tightest boxer briefs imaginable. He looks at home in EJ’s kitchen, like he’d know how EJ liked to load his dishwasher or where to find the special omelet pan.

He startles at the sound of the door shutting, but when he turns around he looks relieved to see EJ. He’s got on one of EJ’s black zip up hoodies, and EJ doesn’t understand why until he looks down at his own chest and sees the tiny 29 emblazoned on the side.

EJ knows he’s fucked up when he sees the way Nate’s face lights up at EJ wearing his number.

“Hey,” EJ says, side-stepping Nate as he goes in for a kiss. “We...should talk.”

Nate must sense immediately that something has gone sour somewhere between kissing on the couch last night and standing in the kitchen this morning because he shrinks away, vulnerable in his bare feet and the sweatshirt he’d thought had been some kind of declaration.

EJ’s not ready for the broken noise that comes from Nate’s throat or the way he won’t stop looking at EJ even though it looks like it physically hurts him. “Why are you jerking me around like this?” Nate asks. He pulls the pot of bubbling oatmeal off the stove and turns the heat off, ready for what feels like can only be a drawn out argument. “C’mon, EJ. I’ve wanted to be with you forever.”

“Forever like when you told me we should stop wasting your time so you could have something real with someone?” EJ asks. He doesn’t want to sound this bitter. He’s over it. He’d had nearly ten years to get over it.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, it was good,” EJ says. It hadn’t felt that way at the time, but Nate had meant it, and it had been better for him to realize that early on rather than let himself get even more invested. “I needed to hear it. My dumb ass would probably still be in love with you if you hadn’t cut me loose.”

Nate makes a sound like the punched out exhale from a hard hit to the boards, and EJ realizes his mistake. He’d never said that out loud before, not even to himself, not even after Gabe had tried to push the word on him. He’d been in love with Nate. Past tense. At least he’d managed that.

The room shrinks, drawn tight like a coil about to spring forward. He can’t stand the thought of Nate trying to fill up that space with condescending condolences or regretful apologies.

He’d been in love with Nate, and Nate hadn’t felt the same way. So what? He was always giving his heart to things that couldn’t love him the way he wanted them to.

He retreats to the living room, starts rearranging his books on the shelf, and pretends he doesn’t hear Nate follow him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nate’s voice is small, and it makes EJ irrationally angry that Nate is hurt that EJ had kept this from him. As if EJ owed him how he felt.

“When was I supposed to do that?” He shoves the last two books into an opening too small for them both to fit and manages to bend all of the pages of the smaller soft cover. “When you got dumped and decided I’d work as a stand in between one girlfriend and the next? Or maybe when you brought a boyfriend to Josty’s wedding?” Gabe had checked in on him the whole night to make sure he didn’t do something stupid like hide in the coat closet with a bottle of the good champagne, but he’d been fine. The difference between Nate not wanting to be with someone like him and not wanting to be with him was not as close as he’d thought it’d be. He’d wanted something real and never considered EJ an option not because it would have meant coming out or putting a name to what he was but because EJ had only ever been for sex, an easy way to pass the time. Someone good enough to fuck but never someone to love.

That was fine. He’d danced with Mel and Jenna and Leslie and chirped Tyson for crying during the toasts and goaded Gabe into a very ill-advised strip tease. Totally fine.

“I’d just wanted you to know I was ready,” Nate whispers.

“Yeah,” EJ says. “I got that loud and clear. You didn’t really need to grope your boyfriend through the reception for me to figure it out.”

“I’d wanted to be ready for all of the stuff I was supposed to want, but every time I got it, I couldn’t convince myself to want it more than I already wanted you.” Nate’s red eyed as he tries to rewrite what EJ already knows happened. “I thought I could come out and you’d realize I was ready to be serious about being with you and we’d like be in love or whatever…”

“You came out by dating someone else.” There’s no rewriting that. EJ can still feel the visceral punch to the gut that seeing him kiss that guy on the dancefloor had been. He used to run his fingers through the soft hairs at the back of EJ’s head like that. He’d even held their bodies close and swayed while they danced in EJ’s kitchen, cackling each time EJ stumbled over his feet because he wouldn’t let Nate lead. Never in front of their friends though. Never in front of anybody.

“Yeah, because I knew you’d hate the attention. You saw how the guys were about Cassie. They were a million times worse with Devon. I was gonna date him for a couple months and then once the guys got over the fact that I had a boyfriend I’d break up with him and we’d…” Nate loses the thread. “But you completely disappeared.”

“It felt really shitty, Nate,” EJ admits. He smoothes out the pages of the damaged book and slips it gently into a better spot.  “Seeing you go hard for this guy after I’d told myself for years that you not wanting to be with me hadn’t been about me. You just hadn’t wanted to be with a guy, right? But then you show up with this guy you’ve known less than two months in the most obvious way possible. It was like you wanted me to know it hadn’t been about not wanting to come out. I just hadn’t been worth coming out for.”

“Oh.” Nate sounds small though it feels like he’s taking up even more space than usual.

EJ folds himself onto the barstool farthest from Nate. He’s tired of feeling unchosen, but it’s hard to reconcile those feelings to the new context Nate has given. Nate had treated him poorly, thinking it was a kindness. It didn’t make the feeling go away or the outcome any less painful.

“Both of us probably should have talked more,” EJ offers, and Nate nods.

“I wish I hadn’t hurt you.” Nate rubs at his eyes with the crumpled sleeves of EJ’s sweatshirt and grimaces. “I wasn’t careful with you at all.”

All he’d wanted was a Nate who’d seen him and liked the view, but Nate sees him now, and EJ isn’t sure that can make up for all the years in between when Nate hadn’t.

“Maybe I fucked it up too much,” Nate says, and he’s looking at EJ with the same sort of determined look he had when they’d gotten to the locker room that first game back before they knew they’d claw their way into a playoff spot after a year in last place. “But if there’s even a chance...I don’t want to stop trying.”

EJ wants to say there isn’t, wishes he’d meant it when he said he was over it, but he’s loved Nate since that terrible season when he’d replaced his youthful easiness with the heavy weight of carrying their team, and no amount of distance or avoidance had changed that. Nate’s always been worth the effort of loving.

But he can’t trust Nate not to realize he could find someone else, someone without the baggage, so he says, “I’ll be here,” and hopes Nate knows what he means.

* * *

EJ finishes the table before the Avs knock San Jose out in the third round. He gets the guy who delivers the horse feed to help him haul it into the house and spends an extra two hours building an almost accurate model of Mikko’s game winner out of Emmy’s Lego men. He runs out of Legos and has to use one of the dogs’ tennis balls for Gabe, which is probably more to scale anyways. He makes sure to label the guys before snapping a photo and sending it in the old group chat. His notifications have been off for years, so he’s not even sure they use it any more, but he figures it’ll get to who it’s supposed to.

Replies come in quick succession, a series of typing bubbles popping up all at once.

 **t-beauty** big head with the assist. nice.  
**Mikko** I knew you got better reception than you say  
**Landy**  notorious liar Erik Johnson  
**Landy** you’re supposed to be here  
**Landy** Emmy will fight you  
**Landy** I taught her my right hook  
**t-beauty** weak threat. everyone knows you throw pillows  
**Nate Dogg** nice table :)

EJ grins and mutes his notifications.

* * *

The Avs take the Western Conference in seven. Gabe calls after every game to remind him that he promised he’d come, and less than an hour after they hoist the Campbell he gets a text from Gabe that’s just a screenshot of a plane ticket with EJ’s name on it.

Denver glows with the thrum of the city’s nightlife as the plane descends. He’s flown into Denver more than any other place on earth, and he still has to catch his breath a little every time. It might not be home any more, but it was for a long time, and that feeling of awe and belonging is worth holding onto.

Gabe texted him Nate’s address while he was still in the air, and EJ can’t resist texting, “Quit interfering, Daddy,” even though he appreciates not having to ask. When the uber driver drops him in front of Nate’s house, there are still lights on, and he can hear the quiet murmur of the tv and one of the dogs’ nails clicking on the hardwood. They start up a chorus of noisy barking when he knocks but quiet with a sharp command in German.

When Nate pulls open the door, he looks wired, still wearing what he normally wore home from games and the white sneakers he only wore indoors. Silence stretches between them as Nate gawps at EJ standing on his front porch: take out bag in one hand, carry on in the other.

“We stopped at Honor Society and got you this.” He shoves a bag of Nate’s favorite take out into Nate’s hands. Nate accepts it skeptically and peeks around EJ to look for the other part of his ‘we.’ “Me and the uber driver. She already left, but she says good luck in the finals.”

Nate still doesn’t move, blinking up at EJ like he can’t quite fit EJ standing on his front porch into the reality of the moment. EJ knows the feeling.

“Can I come in?” he asks, when Nate still doesn’t offer.

Nate shudders like a robot going back online, and when he looks at EJ this time it’s like he actually sees him. “I--yeah.” He steps out of the doorway and turns his body so that EJ can squeeze by. “My parents are here.”

And--”Oh.”--he should have called.

“They’d love to see you,” Nate adds, softly. He’s probably even telling the truth. EJ gave good parent. It’s what had made him such a good boyfriend in high school to all those girls who hadn’t quite figured out he was gay. But Nate’s family is closer than most, and he’s not sure he wants to know how much Nate’s told his parents about them.

“I don’t--”

“You don’t have to but…” Nate huffs, leaning into EJ for a brief moment before stepping back into his own space. “I always want you here.”

Who could argue with that.

“I should maybe pick up some more takeaway.”

* * *

They don’t talk about the games. Nate goes through his regular playoff rituals--”Not superstitions, fuck you”--and after every home game EJ slips out of the family box and goes back to the house before Nate sees him. He helps Kathy fill the fridge with tupperware after tupperware of pre-made lunches and dinners and between meal snacks and takes the dogs out for meandering runs around Washington Park when Nate’s in Toronto. On the days in between when it’s like Nate’s only half there, they lay out on the deck in swim trunks while EJ reads his airport novel aloud and Nate dozes, and at night they watch movies that are parent selected and usually have them both drifting sleepily into each other’s shoulders.

Every night Nate walks him to the guest bedroom door and says, “See you tomorrow?” like he’s not quite convinced EJ will still be there in the morning.

“Definitely.”

They fly through the first five games, more wins than losses, and suddenly it’s the final moments of game six, the seconds ticking down to zero on a scoreboard that says the Avalanche have won. The buzzer sounds and the home crowd erupts. By the time Gabe clutches the Cup, hands it to Nate, and screams delighted into his grinning face, EJ’s pretty sure he’s crying.

“Time to go get him, eh?” Graham nods with his chin to center ice where EJ’s eyes automatically find Nate despite the chaos of confetti and bodies.

There are cameras everywhere, and every one seems to want a photo of Nate with the team and the Cup and his family in every possible configuration. EJ hangs back and avoids the lens as much as possible, even less inclined to be the subject of a photographer now that it wasn’t part of his professional duties.

“You came!” Nate calls breathlessly, weaving through a maze of bodies to reach him. The light in his eyes rival Denver’s skyline at night, and it feels something like a miracle to have the radiance of Nate’s victory and joy directed at him.

EJ grins back and hopes all the love and optimism and pride he’s been holding inside him feels something like a miracle to Nate, too. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

He thinks about Emmy’s baby kisses and the sheer amount of love he has for her, and when he looks up at Nate he sees the kind of love that would climb mountains and span miles and do the work for years to come. EJ can’t help himself. He wraps a hand around Nate’s neck and pulls him into a kiss that’s part declaration and part a bursting forth of all the love he’d been too afraid for Nate to see.

Camera flashes go off in different directions around them, and someone wolf whistles over Nate’s shoulder, but Nate only clings to EJ more tightly, smiling against his mouth. EJ throws the bird in the general vicinity of the noise and hopes it reaches the intended recipient, but he’s not willing to stop kissing Nate to find out. He has too many other things to care about. 


End file.
